Dell FlexAddress Simplifies Blade Deployment And Management | | 2008-07-01 | | Dell has launched a new device for virtualizing the input/output of its PowerEdge M-Series blade server systems.
The FlexAddress tool is enabled by a secure digital card (similar in format to the flash memory card used in digital cameras) for the PowerEdge M1000e Chassis Management Controller (CMC). The CMC is a small unit that handles some remote access and power control operations on the M1000e chassis.
The SD card holds a unique set of 208 Ethernet MAC addresses and 64 Fibre Channel world wide names, so it can deal with some of the networking and storage mapping usually done on a blade-by-blade basis.
The card allows customers to remove blades and slot in new systems without needing to reconfigure the individual servers making the blade chassis more flexible. Networking and storage mapping is done at the chassis level instead of the individual blade level.
The Dell product is very similar to Hewlett-Packard’s Virtual Connect and IBM’s Open Fabric Manager. Dell, however, has priced its product at $500 per chassis. Open Fabric Manager ranges from $1,400 to $2,000 per chassis, and Virtual Connect is available for about $4,700. However the Dell product is limited to operating across two chassis.
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